


Start Me Up

by MantisandtheMoonDragon



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Character Growth, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Grey-Asexuality, Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Possessive Behavior, Secret Crush, Self-Destruction, Self-Worth Issues, Sexual Tension, Single-Target Sexuality, Size Difference, Team as Family, Teammates to Lovers, Teratophilia, To Friends to Lovers, expectations vs. reality, self-image issues, sexual awakening, wet dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 11:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11758782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MantisandtheMoonDragon/pseuds/MantisandtheMoonDragon
Summary: "I don't even like the type of thing you are!"The Galaxy was playing some sort of sick joke on them. It had to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... I'm taking the plunge and writing this. Enjoy.

The creature bearing down on Mantis grinned wide, flashing the woman with rows and rows of tiny, sharp teeth and winding tongue that licked at its stretched, grey lips above her. Mantis quaked as strings of saliva dripped onto her head, closing her eyes so as not to face the look of a beast that very much wanted to take a bite out of her. She prayed that it would kill her first and eat her corpse after, although she would not be spared pain after being dragged off from the rest of the guardians minutes prior.

“Hey! Shit for brains!”

The onslaught of spittle raining on Mantis stopped when she moved out of the way enough to peer over her shoulder. She saw Rocket perched on the jagged hill’s edge that she’d been dragged from, and her features relaxed as she beheld his furious gaze and tensed muscles in the fiery light of the sun. He was the first to race after her, and the first to arrive with burning strong anger at his heels on Mantis’s behalf.

The sight of him took her breath away.

“Where’s the hurry?” Rocket asked, sounding jovial. “I thought you wanted ta play wit’ all a’ us, but I’m beginnin’ to feel left out here.”

The creature hunched over her backed away, smart enough to realize it was being threatened by the firepower that Rocket had brought with him. Both it and Rocket growled at one another, silently daring the other to make a move.

Finally, the wolfish Thing walked backward on its reptilian-like feet and retreated into the rocky terrain.

He went in laughing that obnoxious, glee-saturated laugh of his and had two enormous guns blazing in either hand. 

Mantis’s body tightened as she watched at his retreating figure. A familiar feeling seized her at the sight, all too familiar, and yet the insect woman drew a blank as to what that powerful sensation was called.

It dominated her mind and body until she realized that she’d been mired to the ground floor for too long. Mantis rose carefully, her stomach fluttering so much so that she felt like she needed to laugh. She could feel her legs shaking when she was fully upright, and yet she risked falling to pieces to stagger toward the cave. The thought that she should help Rocket pushed through the mull of everything else until she was grasped by two pairs of hands on her arms.

Mantis looked up wildly, and saw both Peter and Gamora caging her in.

Peter looked at her, relief plain on his face. “Mantis.”

“Are you alright?” Gamora asked.

She tried to nod, but became dizzy. “I am okay, yes.”

“Are you sure?” Several indents appeared in Peter’s brow while he brushed sand and dirt away from the woman’s face. “You’re not bleeding or anything, right? Did it bite you?”

Mantis shook her head, and smiled at their concern. The warmth that had been building in her lower belly retreated to a safer region in her chest until she felt toasty and loved inside, as well as flimsy. Could a feeling induce motion sickness? “I am, really –”  

“Her foot is facing an unnatural angle.” Gamora interrupted. Both she and Peter looked down to see Mantis’s left foot twisted outward, perpendicular to her right. She could barely touch the ground on it.

“Here, we should,” Peter kept brushing at Mantis’s face to chase away the dirt and bits of hair before he wrapped an arm around Mantis and positioned her arm around his shoulder. “Get you to the medbay and check it out. There’s scanners and antiseptic and… tutorials on handling cyber wolf bites, there. I bet. I mean, I’m sure.”

He looked over the top of Mantis’s dizzied head. “Will you get Rocket outta the cave and meet us back at the transport? I think we’ve got all we need otherwise.”

Gamora nodded while Peter led his sister away from the audible carnage. Mantis limped next to Peter, but turned back in time to see Gamora moving to the mouth of the orange cavern stealthily. Distant howls, and Rocket’s continued laughter, sent a shiver up Mantis’s spine.

* * *

“Here. Lie here.” Peter helped Mantis take her arm back, then gently eased her onto the cot. The quadrant had come equipped with many necessities preserved after the fallout on Ego’s planet, and it was a miracle given their line of work that one of the most prominent necessities was the medbay.

He lifted Mantis’s legs over the side of the cot and hissed sympathetically when he got a closer look at her foot. “Shit. I’m sorry I didn’t carry you, Mantis. I didn’t realize it was so bad.”

Peter’s hand wrapped around Mantis’s the longer his eyes focused on her foot, and Mantis couldn’t help but feel his worry and sorrow, along with the faint remainder of his previous fear and adrenaline, seeping into her. She was unsure of whether he knew what he knew what he was doing or if he had forgotten that Mantis could feel as he did through their contact.

Her happiness over his extreme concern for her was odd, as she was conflicted over whether taking pleasure in it was a bad thing or not when it made Peter feel so awful. Mantis’s inner debate settled when she caught wind of the anger he felt at himself for letting her be pulled away from their family.

“Peter.” Mantis’s voice came out raspy. “Please do not be so upset. It was not your fault that I was dragged away.”

Peter nodded vigorously – removing his hand from hers in the meantime – but he looked no less troubled. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Still, it just _ripped_ you from the rest of us, and nobody knew what was going on before you were… just gone.”

“I should’ve been faster.” Mantis’s face fell at his words. She understood that Peter wasn’t territorial, but that he did have a deeply-imbedded fear of losing those he cared about.

It was something that had grown over time to become a larger, defining aspect of who Peter was ever since his mother had passed away. And it claimed more of his motivation to fight each day after the death of Ego and Peter’s surrogate father, Yondu. “It could’ve been worse.”

Peter remembered himself after a moment, and sniffed noncommittally before he leaned down below Mantis’s cot and shuffled through the compartments below to find a scanner. Mantis wrung her hands while he upended a medkit and took out the largest device, unstringing wires with suction cups attached, and the two watched the cords spiral outward and crawl along the cot down to the floor and beyond.

“Now, I’m not a doc or anything.” The captain started, sifting through their medical supplies to see if there was anything more useful, or at least something that would make Mantis’s foot heal completely in a miraculous fashion.

“Uhhhhhh, so these… don’t go anywhere specific… Right?” Peter turned the scanner on and stared at the reader screen with too-squinted eyes. “Oh, wait. It says ‘place wires on pulse points and access of vitals including…”

The mortal man fiddled with the many wires, one eye on the scanner and the other trying to find the proper points on Mantis’s body that counted as vitals. He eventually placed most them on her face and on either side of her neck and shoulders, and had asked where her heart was so that he could gently stick a wire on top of her sternum. He did so clinically, and finished it off by putting a suction cup between her eyebrows.

Mantis giggled, lifting a hand to tap the wire. “There are so many on my head already. Why do I need another there?”

Peter grinned, softly. “Well, it says put it over the Mind’s Eye if your rituals so incline. Guess that means that some folk like to include their gods when they get scanned, because it makes them feel safer, so I thought we should try it too.”

She grinned at him when he shrugged. “Just to be safe.”

“Well, I do feel safe.” Mantis agreed. She very much did, and wrapped her freed arms around herself in a hug when Peter looked as if he wanted to do so. He wouldn’t risk worsening any further injuries to her however, not as long as the scanner was running.  

* * *

It was some time before the scanner had analyzed Mantis fully, and Peter had filled the monotony of waiting for the results with a story about a boy who could never grow up and whose name was also Peter. Enraptured, Mantis couldn’t help pouting when Peter had finished telling the story of how Tiger Lily was rescued by the dreadfully inept Captain Hook and his personal assistant Smee. He was called away by Gamora on the comm., but promised that he could finish the story after they took off from Satno.

She was still laid up on one of the Quadrant’s infirmary cots, biding her time with practiced patience, when a commotion broke out down the hall.

At the telltale sound of one brusque, angry voice, goosebumps arose from her skin, and Mantis tucked her legs in that much closer.

Soon enough, Gamora was pulling a bloodied Rocket, whose clothes had been completely shredded and who was still locked in a fighting stance, into the infirmary. She kept her grip on his arm before patting the cot next to Mantis’s.

“Sit down.” She tugged him, like she was making to throw him onto it.

“I’ll do it myself!” Rocket’s teeth clacked as he ripped his hand away from Gamora’s and stumbled an inch. The raccoon right himself with a glare at the green-skinned woman, who looked less than impressed. She spared a glance at Mantis and offered a gentle, sympathetic smile.

“Would you go already? Mom?” Rocket growled, and the near-purr brought Mantis’s easygoing mood to a halt.

Gamora left shortly, rolling her eyes at Rocket’s immaturity, and Rocket busily scrubbed at his face with slicked paws as Mantis stayed still.

The bug-like woman’s eyelids slid down with the rapidly increasing potent feeling that she had endured on the battlefield. She’d realized while her mind had wandered in Peter’s absence that, along with the body constrictions and the sweating that came with thinking back to how she’d been rescued, Mantis’s mind would be filled with a sticking fog over Rocket.

The haze, that warmed her body and made her limbs stop working at the most inopportune moments, made her want to run and hide but it had returned again and again in her solitude as a faint alarm of sorts.

It had returned, fully-fleshed, then.  

“Eh, bug lady? What’re ya doin’? Did ya go deaf down there on Satno?”

Mantis doubled back, and saw Rocket looking at her pointedly. His foot tapped impatiently against the adjoining cot, though his impatience came at the same pace of the song echoing from beyond the doorframe.

“I’ve been askin’ for the medkit for the last five minutes! Politely! What else do I need to do with you people to get a little cooperation, get on bended knee?” He sneered at her, but Mantis’s energy was zapped. She didn’t have it in her to get offended or let the pang of self-consciousness over her lethargy prompt some action on her part.

She’d never noticed how, with the right lighting, Rocket’s eyes shone like the prettiest copper metal on a royal transport vessel before then. They were downright shimmering now.

“Tch! I spend all my time savin’ our asses and when I have ta ask for a lil’ help occasionally you all… all…” Rocket spoke like he was out of breath, gaze intensely fixed on Mantis while she sat and listened in dead silence.

Eventually they were both silent, though Rocket still panted somewhat, and Mantis was aware of the sweat on her palms accumulating.

“Why are we jus’…” Rocket’s voice trailed away.

“Staring at each other?” Mantis finished quietly. Her insides curled at Rocket’s peculiar look of confusion, and how she couldn’t help but think it was delightful to every sense of hers.

This made more sense than it should have. 

Mantis’s whole body tingled, and she wanted to laugh and cry once again, knowing that what she was feeling love. Romantic, sexual love. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna stay away from writing for a while, but I guess I changed my mind.

_She was sitting in her alcove, happily thumping her foot to the music that filtered all throughout their family’s ship. The ship itself was empty, bereft of the noise that came from so many bodies all in one place trying to figure out where they were going._

_Oddly, Mantis wasn’t frightened or busy wondering where the rest of the guardians were. She was in a state of blissful calm, letting herself ‘feel’ the music as Peter had once taught her to. One had to pay attention to the rhythm of the song, not simply the words that the singer was gifting you with, and not be afraid to get lost in the way that the entirety of the music made you feel._

_The sheltered woman had questioned the possibility of ‘getting lost’ in the music before, but like with many questions that were near parroted from Drax, Peter had advised her not to take the phrases too literally and to enjoy herself in her own way._

_In the middle of feeling her way through the song, in its final notes, Mantis felt warm breath tickle her ear. “What’a’ya doin’ lady?”_

_Mantis whipped around, in time to bump noses with none other than Rocket. She stared eye-to-eye with the resident explosives expert, and was put off by the easy amusement in his gaze. This was the closest she’d ever been to Rocket in a way that wasn’t hostile or uneasy. Generally, Mantis kept at a distance from the raccoon more than she did any of the rest of their friends, partially due to the need to preserve her hands in the event that she couldn’t contain herself and not pet him, and partially due to reality unfolding for her. Mantis could feel her mind grasping at the concept that Rocket was not a puppy, or a pet of any kind – just as she was starting to grasp that she herself was no pet. Just as she was grasping how to ‘feel’ music._

_It took time._

_“I am listening.” She replied shyly. The woman didn’t know why she wasn’t backing away from Rocket, with his sharp teeth and intense eyes just a hairbreadth away. But she felt no fear, only a lackadaisical curiosity as to why her teammate hadn’t backed away either._

_“Mind if I listen wit’ ya?” He asked coolly, forgoing acknowledgement of the unusual closeness altogether. His smile was wide, but not threatening or angry or patronizing. It was warm and crisp, and reached his bronze eyes like he was happy to be near her._

_Mantis felt her face heat up, but she returned the smile. “Of course. Please do.”_

_Rocket stayed where he was, filling up her view without moving a muscle._

_“Rocket?” Mantis’s brows knitted in confusion and slight discomfort. She was only getting warmer._

_“Mantis.” He never called her by her given name, and while he’d never been so close and pleasant to her at the same time, Rocket had also never, ever initiated closeness like he was then. She could feel his breath on her face, and she could ‘feel’ him smiling against her –_

_“Mantis…”_

* * *

“Mantis?”

 

“Mantis?!”

 

Mantis jolted on the slab of a cot, and conked her head against Peter’s forehead. The Terran groaned, instantly pressing a hand to his head and rubbing fastidiously, and with a glance at him through screwed-up eyes, Mantis copied the motion.

“I am so sorry!” She apologized with a yelp, amid rubbing her forehead despite it not helping in the least.

 

“No, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.” Peter quit rubbing his head and Mantis did the same.

 

“I just wanted to tell you that we left Satno, and the scan-thing is done. All your vitals – and stuff are totally fine, except for your heartbeat which was a little fast. But that should wear off by tomorrow, since Gamora and Kraglin both think it’s just the adrenaline rush from before passing through your system.”

 

Mantis nodded. “That’s good to know.”

 

“Yeah! And, oh.” The man gestured to Mantis’s lower half, where her foot was bound in a dark blue and red cast of thistrik binds. “The muscles in your foot were torn up, but it was pretty mild. Kraglin bound it up for you, and you should be good as new in six standard weeks.”

Mantis’s feelers twitched. She bent her knee slightly, only to feel the unusual mass of her new cast slow her down quickly. The foot itself felt much better, cocooned as it was with lightweight binds, and she greatly preferred the bulky numbness to the searing pain from earlier.

 

Peter took her silence for disdain either way. “Hey, I know it sucks. But it’s not so bad. I should tell you about the time my boots malfunctioned when I was twelve. I fell from the rafters on the Eclector and... well, I don’t remember what happened, but Oblo told me that my head cracked open and I was leaking all over the place!”

 

Mantis gasped in horror. “ **Leaking?** ”

 

“Yeah, there was a lot of blood, all over the place…” Peter snickered fondly over the memory (or the idea of the memory), but he blanched at the look of pure terror on Mantis’s face. “But I was fine! Totally fine! I was back to flying up in the rafters after just a couple days!”

* * *

 

Mantis was cleared to leave by Peter after he’d helped her get up from her cot and walk around the medbay for practice. It had taken more than a few tries for her to stand up on her own and walk with a comfortable, if not clearly limp, gait.

            By the time she was ready to return to her room, many of the guardians were already asleep after licking their battle wounds. For once, the unit-based reward from their temporary pest control mission for the Satno people had been saved and stored for use on Xandar, where they would be making port for the first time since Mantis had joined them.

 

Unfortunately, the switch from energetic day to indolent night made Peter more than tired. He’d helped Mantis with a fond, friendly smile, but she could see how tired he was by the bags under his eyes and his slumped shoulders. She sent him away kindly, assuring him that she would be able to walk the short distance between the medical area and her room by herself.

Their leader lingered still, but agreed to go back to the Captain’s Quarters, which lay in the opposite direction of where she slept after they’d stepped out into the hallway.

 

Mantis wobbled out of the doorframe, mouth drawn and feeling small. “P-Peter?”

 

“Yeah?” He asked.

 

“Um, where is Rocket?” She forced the words out, trying not to let her previous dream affect her as it had before. The imagery of it, and the feelings it wrought, had waxed and waned in the back of her mind like a moon’s cycle.

Still, it was a good question, as the bug-like woman could remember him being in the medbay with her before she’d fallen asleep – giving her sideways glances yet turning away in a dismissive manner whenever she returned his gaze.

 

Peter rolled his eyes reflexively. “Oh. He’s probably in the engine room. He’s such a sensitive jerk, he’s been complaining all day long since we left. Don’t worry about ‘im, he’ll get over it.”

 

            While she was unsure of why Rocket was in such a sour mood (not that it was abnormal), Mantis was glad that the raccoon hadn’t been seriously injured if he was able to retire to his room as well.

 

“Goodnight, Mantis. If you need something, just com one of us, ‘kay?” Peter laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her seriously, but returned to his warm, goofy self when she nodded.

 

“Okay!” She agreed. “Goodnight.”

 

 

* * *

 As she watched Peter walk down the hallway, Mantis ruminated on returning to her room as she should. It wouldn’t do to tire herself out with walking on the very same day that she’d been injured, and if Peter or Drax or whomever were to come and check on her, whether she called for them or not, she ought to be in her room.

 

Peter turned a corner and was out of sight before the girl hobbled down the hallway, away from her room and toward the bridge. An increasingly oppressive feeling of guilt weighed her down along with her bulky cast, but Mantis could only stop along her path to fret so much. She was already 50 ft. away from where the steering and controls sat before she could change her mind for the fortieth time, and in that instant, she saw the familiar outline of Gamora at the control console.

 

While the most comfortable with Drax, Mantis was less frightened and more thankful that Gamora was the only person awake. She wasn’t entirely sure why she felt the need to seek someone out for the uncomfortable feelings that curled around her heart and sent heated fluttering in her stomach. It was simply too difficult to keep it inside, especially when Mantis knew that she technically didn’t have to keep her feelings to herself, even if they were scary. She’d considered her options beforehand with a hint of joy, as the knowledge that she could actually tell people if she had a problem and that they would not cast her aside for it was a special kind of wonderful.

The realization of it all was still in the back of her mind and was being blockaded – by what, Mantis couldn’t say save for it having to do with how she didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t know what it would mean to feel this way herself, as she never had before, and the sheltered young woman’s only point of reference for her feelings was Ego…

 

“Gamora.” She called, unable to emerge on deck entirely.

 

The former assassin looked up, only to rear back slightly as Mantis’s face came into view, while the rest of her figure was covered in dark shadow. Gamora had never found Mantis ugly or creepy (and treated the descriptors with as much contempt as was appropriate in order to get along with everyone else). Nevertheless, there was something unsettling about seeing the quieter woman, with her enormous black eyes that practically took up three-quarters of her thin face, gawking severely that made Gamora’s breath hitch.

 

“Please, help me.” Mantis whispered. 

 

Gamora stood proximately, straight-backed and attentive. There was no one else close enough within the vicinity of both women, and yet her green-clad teammate was hiding like she might be ambushed if she wasn’t concealed, which was a good enough cause for the green-woman to worry.

 

She hadn’t gotten within speaking distance however, when Mantis burst in an emotional torrent of words and moans.

“When... Today, when we drove our enemies into the cave, I felt something inside and I did not know what to do.” Mantis told Gamora, breathing quickly as if they were still in the heat of battle. “I thought that - that when we got back to the ship, that I would not feel it anymore.” 

 

Her lower lip quivered. “But it has taken hold of me all day.” 

 

Gamora blinked, stalled by the onslaught. “Hold… Hold on. Mantis, are you ill?”

 

“I thought the scanner didn’t pick up any foreign bacteria in your system?” Gamora immediately pressed the back of her hand to Mantis’s forehead, but she didn’t rub harshly like Mantis thought she should.

 

Gamora herself had learned the gesture of touching a loved one’s forehead to feel for excessive heat from Peter when she’d contracted Miscu Flu not four months back. She knew now that it was something that Terran mothers did when their children complained of being sick. “Yet you say that something has ‘taken hold of you’?”  

 

“I do not know for sure.” Mantis confessed. “But... I think that what I am feeling is worse than if I was sick.” 

_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel so weird with writing Dream!Rocket. He's ooc and I know it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Literally picks up where the last chapter left off. Some Mantis and Gamora bonding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that I have written in eons. A lot has happened. I appreciate the kudos and the reviews, always!

Mantis was still somewhat frozen. She’d been stiff as a board since approaching Gamora and getting dragged over to a nearby outlook’s ledge.  

 

She wasn’t afraid of Gamora… much. But, to move in this moment seemed wrong, and would no doubt be irritating when the green woman was performing such a delicate task. Her fingers were gently raking through Mantis’s hair, pulling at the strands enough to tug at her roots.

 

That in itself wasn’t unpleasant - but it was like being touched by royalty. One wrong move and Mantis could possibly offend her teammate, or make her angry.

 

            “Am I hurting you?” Gamora leaned to one side and caught Mantis’s eye. Reflexively, Mantis looked down at the floor.

 

“Oh, no. No.” She chirped. “I’m just… not sure what we’re doing?”

 

Gamora snorted, though the sound was so soft it might as well have been a sigh. “Sorry. You were panicking so…”

           

            The warrior separated Mantis’s hair into six parts and began to entwine different strands together in a braid. She’d raised an eyebrow at the uneven length that her teammate had from front to back, but Gamora had faced challenges far greater than this.

 

“I thought this might calm you.” She continued. “When I’m nervous, I often braid my hair.”

 

“Oh.” Mantis spoke in awe.

 

“I’ve done so since I was a child.” Gamora finished. Her hands continued working

 

She was sheltered, but not so naive that she didn’t understand that this information wasn’t precious. Gamora had come across as a guarded person since Mantis first met her, and was threatened with a broken hand for even being near her.

            They were on much friendlier terms now, but even then Mantis found it difficult to gather the moments when Gamora showed softness or affection. That she’d reveal something from her past was even more of a wonder than when she was kind and open.

 

It stayed silent for a beat, and Gamora had moved on to setting the next braid with stealthy ease. Mantis found that she hardly minded it, as the barely there pull of Gamora’s fingers and the sight of stars whirling by their outlook became soothing just as quickly.

 

            “What made you think you were ill?” Gamora asked in a light murmur. “Or worse? Whatever that may be.”

 

And all of a sudden, Mantis went stiff again and felt her insides jump uncomfortably. “It… It is difficult to explain.”

The light pulling stopped for a moment, but went on: a silent inquiry for Mantis to go on and try.

 

Mantis breathed in. “At the cave, before you and Peter got to me, Rocket got to me first.”

 

The very mention of his name made her stomach clench. “He was very intimidating, when he threatened our foe.”

 

“Rocket scared you?” Gamora asked.

 

            “No, I don’t - I don’t think so, but when he’d run into that cave, I felt so strange.” Mantis wrung her hands together. “I couldn’t stop shaking.”

 

“Rocket would never hurt you.” Gamora stated.

 

“I know -” Mantis hurried to dissuade her, but Gamora cut her off without notice.

 

“But, perhaps you were scared _for_ him.” She went over the words slowly, as if testing the thought out. “That would make sense. We were all scared for you when that Lycyber attacked. Yet, Rocket put himself in danger for you.”

 

            Mantis blinked, feeling airy lightness in the hollow of her chest. It made her almost breathless, and as though she could somehow float out of her skin and into the compressed oxygen inside the cabin.

 

“For me?” She breathed quietly.

 

            Behind her, Gamora bunched the five braids she’d made together, then twisted them around seamlessly. Her brow had furrowed a smidge at Mantis’s apparent disbelief that they would come save her. It had been some time since Mantis had joined the Guardians, and Gamora had believed that - though it was unspoken - Mantis understood that she was valued as a team member. It mattered to not just her or Peter or Drax, but to everyone that Mantis was safe. Gamora was certain that even Rocket cared, though he tried so damn hard to hide it.

 

“Any one of us would have done so.” Gamora said. “Just as you would have done if one of us was in your place.”

 

Mantis nodded without hesitation. “Of course.”

 

            Gamora smiled. She’d both bought and pilfered jewelry from the many different vendors and shops they’d passed since their second return to Xandar, including a group of chainlink hairbands. There were plenty on hand for Gamora whenever she needed them, but it didn’t hurt to spare one in this case.

 

The silver glinted pleasantly against the black as it held Mantis’s newfound braid.

 

            “But, Gamora?” Mantis pivoted to glimpse at the green woman’s face. “Why am I still feeling it? My heart is still beating so fast when I only just think of what happened.”

 

“Maybe your fears were suppressed?” Gamora said. “You were fine before because you didn’t want to frighten us. But now that the danger has fled, you’re experiencing what you would have in that moment? A rush of adrenaline.”  

 

The answer stumped Mantis. She stared at Gamora before slowly turning back to the outlook. Her reflection beheld a very forlorn expression, highlighted by silver stars still trailing beyond their ship.

 

It was plausible that what had happened on Satno (and in the medbay) were no more than a twisted nerve elicited by the terrifying experience of being dragged away from her friends. Mantis had been so sure that the heat and the fluttering and the chills that she’d had as Rocket came to her rescue were all a part of her attraction to him.

            The feeling had been akin to when Mantis had first discovered Peter’s love for Gamora, and before then, at a time when Ego’s thoughts meandered to territories that Mantis didn’t understand. She’d thought she’d known that feeling better than anyone ever could, despite never having felt it herself.

Then again, Ego had lied about many things. Had manipulated and tricked and harmed those around him, including not just his offspring but his past lovers as well. What he’d projected was perhaps not to be trusted.

 

Mantis considered the possibility. She’d always been fuzzy on everything that she was capable of, ever since birth on Ego’s planet. He’d given her little guidance in the way of knowing herself, most likely because information on her kind wasn’t useful for him to divulge.

However, Mantis could conflate the two concepts of love and fear together. She might have displaced herself, having always feared Ego, and mixed the feelings up in her mind until she couldn’t pick either apart.

 

            Before long, Gamora had leaned forward and squeezed Mantis’s shoulders comfortingly. It wasn’t exactly a hug, but the intent spoke volumes and broke Mantis’s reverie. “I don’t think you’re sick.”

 

“It’ll go away with time.” The woman assured Mantis. Gamora stood and offered Mantis a hand to pull her to her feet.

 

Internally, Gamora admired her own handiwork. The braid had all but made Mantis a little more approachable. And a little more adorable.

 

            “Don’t worry. We’ll be headed to Xandar next.” Gamora said. “And you’ll have plenty of time to calm down and feel safe, again.”

 

* * *

 

_Mantis couldn’t remember falling asleep - where or when was a mystery. Yet she knew on the spot, as soon as she’d gotten a look at her surroundings, that she was dreaming._

_Berhart should have long been forgotten. In her mind, Mantis knew that that was impossible, since she’d been cataloging the very few places she’d gotten to visit since childhood. Still, the sight left her uneasy and a bit puzzled._

_It took her forever to realize that she was in not only a dream, but a memory._

_A memory of what had never happened._

_Ego was inviting the guardians to his ship, as they sat around a campfire. He looked proud and charming, like always, as he telegraphed to Mantis that he knew he’d get his way. Ego had had such faith in Peter Quill, and that in itself paved the way for Ego to brim with almost kindly glee._

_Mantis had heard garbles of sound as she took in the sight of the fire and the blue of the night against her companions, but the dream seemed to solidify when she finally understood what was said._

_“…Even your triangle-faced monkey there.” Mantis’s gaze tore from Ego’s swarthy gate and instantly targeted Rocket._

_He bared his teeth in defiance of Ego’s words, but only for a moment. Mantis watched him blink and pull back, cupping his snout with private indigence and a flicker of hurt. Mantis felt her heart turn into stone at the very sight._

_Ego had disappeared while Mantis ached, and a tiny part of her understood that though this memory had never been, she couldn’t possibly speak out against her former master. No, not even in her mind._

_She leaned toward Rocket, as though waiting to go to him and offer comfort._

_“I am sorry.” Mantis heard herself speak._

_Rocket’s head swiveled in her direction. “What?”_

_“I said I’m sorry.” She repeated. “Ego is cruel, and - and he isn’t always right. He’s wrong.”_

_Rocket’s brow shot up, but he didn’t say a word._

_“He can’t see how wonderful you are.” Mantis said. “Ego would never risk his own life for another like you. You’re more than Ego will ever be.”_

_He wasn’t really Rocket, but the light that touched his brown eyes was painstaking.  A touch of reality, because that flicker of hurt before seemed to have shifted to genuine surprise, and even gratitude._

_Mantis’s heart fluttered again, the ache turning into longing._


End file.
